Abstract Recent developments in auditing receive considerable attention from accountants. The literature and other information available, which relates to auditing in the U.S. up to about the beginning of the twentieth century, seem to indicate that auditing was then completing its first major phase of development. It is generally recognized that auditing in Great Britain had been instituted to a great extent by specific statutory requirements. The principal function of an audit was considered to be an examination of the report of stewardship of corporation directors and the most important duty of the auditor was to detect fraud. Although the adoption of sampling procedures probably represented the most important development in auditing, other changes were beginning to appear, as indicated in the preceding references. This development also seems to represent no departure from the point of view of the detailed auditors, for it seems to represent originally a substitute for the enormous quantity of detailed audit work formerly done in audits.

Abstract There is a present need to devise and establish by authoritative recommendations of the profession a set of accounting concepts and standards, which will be generally accepted and adhered to in the determination of corporate net incomes, so that the findings of the accountant as expressed in the annual reports of American corporations with regard to the amount of the income accrued or loss sustained during the fiscal period, will be accepted and relied on by the public and all interested parties as definitive and conclusive and expressing substantially the facts and the result of the events which took place during the period. In the opinion of many accountants such a codification of standards for income calculations would be an important step forward toward allaying the suspicion and lack of faith in the income determinations presented in corporate financial reports. The great usefulness and social utility of such a development in the accounting profession can hardly be questioned, because if it can be achieved it will help to lay the factual foundation for impartial social control if national economy. It is true that in the determination of corporate income for any period of time opinions and estimates play an important part in greater or less degree, depending on the kind of business and the nature of assets.

I. Accelerator: an exogenous parameter or an endogenous variable, 325. — II. The unreasonableness of the assumption of a constant accelerator in the light of the theory of the firm, 327. — III. The inelastic supply of capital to individual firms checks the operation of the acceleration principle and tends to make the rate of investment a function of the level of income rather than a function of the rate of change of income during the upswing, 331. — IV. Accelerator and the time dimension of investment, 335. — V. Significance of time dimension of investment in the explanation of the appearance of excess capacity and downturn, 339.

A study of the efficient allocation problem in production by the evaluation of the merits of private or corporate enterprise versus a centrally directed economy. Presented before a joint meeting of the American Statistical Association, the American Economic Association, and the Econometric Society in New York City, December 29, 1949.

Abstract The impression may have been gained that the author feels there are very distinct limits within which small business can be assisted. This is a correct impression. For the majority of small firms there is little that can be done in the way of aid. They provide uneconomic substitutes for jobs which have not been provided elsewhere in American system and the primary solution to the problem is not to be found in perpetuating this state of inefficiency. The continuance of the American economic system is much more dependent on finding an effective way to employ this manpower and these resources than in attempting to continue people in a state of "free" but marginal uncertainty. Most persons are not good entrepreneurs even for a small firm. Certainly there are many fewer good businessmen than the numbers of those who are attempting to be entrepreneurs. Small business is concentrated in the service trades and retailing, fields in which a small amount of capital is required and which involve types of operation that do not compete with the greater efficiency of the mass production industries.

Abstract The Standards Rating Committee was appointed in 1949 for a period of five years upon authorization of The Executive Committee, meeting in Columbus, Ohio in May 1948. This committee continued the work of similar committees appointed and serving during the calendar years 1947 and 1948. A portion of the program of study by the committee has now been tentatively completed. This report is therefore submitted with the hope that it will be given full publicity to the members of this Association and generally to all interested persons. The primary objectives of the Committee were agreed upon at the first meeting. These objectives may be suggested by the needs expressed in the following statements adopted unanimously by the Committee. The Committee has therefore attempted to bring out a suggested program of acceptable standards. It is important that proposals herein be accepted generally and put into effect as quickly as feasible in the framework of educational institutional procedure or that objections, criticisms and suggestions be made for the purpose of restatement and revision.